Individuals in need of medical attention for a variety of ailments or conditions typically seek clinical treatment from a healthcare provider. Such treatment may include a combination of procedures, medications or other therapies to stabilize and/or improve the health of an individual or patient. However, the process of providing clinical treatment brings with it the risk of side effects. One such side effect of significant concern when patients seek procedure-related treatments from a healthcare provider is infections. For instance, with inpatient or outpatient surgical procedures, as well as intensive care unit (ICU) stays, the risk of infection to the patient can be high. Whether resulting from clinical issues such as contaminated equipment, individual patient health conditions, or other factors, infections can have a serious impact on the stability of a patient's health status and affect their ability to recover from a health condition. As a result, infections related to healthcare treatment delivery represent an increased risk to public health, and create a significant clinical and financial burden to our society. It has been reported that more than 90,000 persons die annually from these types of infections resulting in a cost to our economy of more than $5 billion annually.
Historically, precautionary measures taken by healthcare providers or clinicians to mitigate the risks of infection have varied widely depending on the type of medical procedure performed, clinician training or preferences, healthcare provider policies, and government regulations. However, the risk of contracting an infection also varies widely depending on the individual patient and type of procedure performed for the patient. Therefore, because of the varying risk of contracting an infection and variety of steps taken to mitigate this risk, clinicians must often analyze an expansive set of information at the point of care to ascertain the potential risk level for a given patient to contract an infection.
Healthcare providers have attempted to establish a generalized guide for determining the level of infection risk for patients seeking clinical treatment in a given facility or system. As one example, the following formula has been widely used as a baseline for calculating the risk of infection:
      [          1              (                  Patients          ×          incidence          ⁢                                          ⁢          %                      ]    ×  100where Patients=the number of annual inpatient admissions for a specific facility or system and incidence %=the number of incidents of infection expressed as a percentage. For example, assume that a clinic admits 16,458 patients in a given year and the incidence of infection for that clinic in that year is 5.7%. The calculated risk of infection for any given patient receiving treatment, according to the formula, would be 0.1%, without regard for the particular patient's medical history, current condition, or treatment that they are undergoing.
This baseline infection risk formula has considerable limitations, since many circumstances surrounding the delivery of care are not taken into consideration. Furthermore, it becomes difficult to monitor a given patient's infection risk over time. For instance, one general assumption is that infection risk increases the longer a patient remains in the hospital or other healthcare facility. Clinicians are essentially left to approximate a particular patient's overall infection risk, and determine whether that risk will increase or decrease during a treatment period. This makes it difficult to implement an infection risk control plan best suited for the patient and creates numerous opportunities for error.